Dear Development Executives

Sometimes what Lainey refers to as my ‘contrariness’ is actually just saturation fatigue. If you’re not into something, or someone, and people keep talking about them, it can feel straight-up aggressive. So you, who are constantly scouring for new talent, could be forgiven for maybe feeling like ‘enough already’ about certain people – in today’s case, Chrissy Teigen.

Except not really, because she keeps moving the bar on being awesome. How can you get mad at your boss for saying “Did you see what she wrote? Did you sign her to a deal yet?” when she’s coming out with stuff like this?

Hi Linda, thanks for asking, you complete witch. I tried for about 9 years. Anything else, let me know! https://t.co/54e9AvIqQ9

Teigen and John Legend have been open about their fertility struggles, so she referred to the boy embryo they know they still have. Normalizing it, since there are lots of families I know whose journey to parenthood has looked like this. But that’s not why it’s newsworthy.

It’s amazing because in the space of 140 characters (maybe a few more now? Right?), she’s straightforward about how offensive the woman’s question is, she’s signature-Chrissy hilarious, and she’s not apologizing for sh-t, because why should she? In three sentences!!

This would be a good story on its own, because she’s awesome and is normalizing IVF and as if some random woman on the internet (whose bio says she’s a teacher) gets to comment on how you form your family. There’s a show in this, maybe focus-group it.

I just want to learn everything from this woman. How does she DO that? What is the substantial spot in her brain reserved for ‘casually scathingly witty’ that I am obviously misusing in my own?

We’ve talked about Teigen and her wit on our Show Your Work podcast a number of times – but now I want to talk to the people who might hire her. I assume at any time that there are dozens of offers coming at her to host shows, to develop shows based on her persona, whatever. To you, young executives, I say this:

Let Her Do What She Wants.

You cannot attempt to put this charm through a development filter. Don’t spend 14 months trying to ‘figure out how to translate’ her brand. You know “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets”? Just make a show where she reads aloud the burns that she scores daily, on people who think they have an easy target in a ‘celebrity’.

Your Future Faithful Audience Member (slash producer, please let me hang out with Chrissy Teigen as if it was my job).